Restless
by StonewashedBlues
Summary: One night, Kili finds himself unable to sleep. Taking it as a sign, he, Fili, and Thorin descend into the darkness of the forest surrounding them and their company. There, they find much more than they expected.


All Kíli could hear was the gush of the wind, seeping through the leaves and ruffling his hair as he tried to sleep. His theory that if he just listened to the leaves and absorbed the sounds of nature around him, it would help him sleep was needless to say, failing.

He flipped over on his bedroll, curling his fingers into the soft lining of his leather pelt. He blew the fringes of his brown hair out of his eyes before clamping them shut again, willing himself to sleep. He tried to envision clouds dancing across his eyelids, a soft feather pillow under his head, the forest floor replaced with a mattress, but none of it worked.

"You too?" He heard Fíli whisper. Surprised, he turned his head to face his brother, his eyes wide.

"I just cannot manage to get to sleep. Anything I try fails."

"Maybe it's a sign," Fíli concluded. "Maybe we should scout the area, look for something. Maybe there's something…or someone…out there."

All it took was a nod from Kíli to have Fíli standing up, offering a hand to his younger brother. Kíli took it, and balancing himself on the balls of his feet, sprung up from the ground, using his brother's forearm to support himself. The two brothers gathered their weapons and made for the edge of the clearing. They were about to wander into the depths of the forest, but were stopped by the clearing of a throat behind them.

"And where do you two think you're going?" Thorin asked, his arm crossed, a single eyebrow raised.

Kíli shrugged. "I was just following him," he said, pointing at his brother, and earning himself a whack upside the head.

"You were not!" Fíli shouted, and then he sighed. "We were going to scout the boundary. We both couldn't sleep and we took it as a sign that maybe something is lurking out there…something that may want to attack us."

If at all possible, Thorin's eyebrow rose higher. "Is that so? And you were planning to do this all by yourselves were you?" He paused, waiting for his nephews to answer him. They merely nodded, Kíli smiling sheepishly at his uncle.

Thorin sighed. "Fine. But I'm coming with you."

Kíli smirked mischievously, a plan popping up in his brain. "But who's going to take watch?" He asked innocently, hoping to ward his uncle off their trail.

Unfortunately for Kili, Thorin didn't buy it.

Thorin kicked Bifur awake and bent down next to his ear. "You take watch. I'm going scouting." Bifur huffed and nodded, shifting himself so he was sitting against a stone nearby, a more comfortable position to watch in.

Thorin turned back around and laughed at Kili's expression, mouth agape and pointing his finger at his uncle.

"Well, boys," Thorin said, chuckling, "Let's get a move on if we're going to go scouting." And he proceeded to pull both Fili and Kili by their hoods into the forest.

~X~

Kili knew he was right in staying awake. Not long after the dwarves had journeyed from camp, they found a farm, though they weren't sure it should be called that. Much of the acreage was bare, and the soil was far too rocky to be tilled. But there was a house at the far end of the property, smoke clearly rising from the chimney. Then again, smoke was rising from the entire house, billowing up into the night sky.

The house was on fire.

The dwarves took off running towards the house, cutting across the fields in the most direct way to the house that they could. Kili felt his heart skip a beat as a section of the house groaned and collapsed, hopefully not taking any of the family inside with it.

When they reached the house, Thorin slammed his entire body (a significant amount of weight, really) into the door, bashing it open and making it crash to what was left of the floor. They burst inside, combing every section of the house for any survivors.

What Kili found upstairs made him shudder.

The family had been asleep. He could see them still lying on the bed, oblivious to the terror that surrounded them. He took a quick second to bend his head over in lament for them, before moving on to the next room.

Before he could knock down the door, he heard a shriek from inside the room he was just about to crash into.

Suddenly, everything was a blur. Kili's protective instinct took over, and with adrenaline coursing through him, he knocked down the door and barreled into the room, using his cloak to shield his mouth and nose from the smoke. He searched the room for the source of the shriek, only to find it at the back right corner of the room.

A girl, a young dwarf girl (from where exactly he did not know), was pinned underneath what was previously a chest of drawers, splinters and wooden planks littering the ground, the majority of them covering her.

Luckily enough, Kili had gone to sleep wearing his thick leather gloves.

In one swift motion, he had knocked the wooden planks away from her body, scooped her into his arms, and flown down the stairs, hurtling out the front door. Thorin and Fili were already outside, their heads bowed for the survivors they hadn't found.

And Kili had just started to notice the blood.

It was all over him by the time he had gained enough distance from the house to pause and take in the teenager he had encased in his arms. He had failed to remove one of the planks of wood, and it as currently sticking out of her right arm, the arm that was ever so conveniently against Kili's chest. It hadn't done any damage to him; it was small enough where it had barely pierced his armor. But it had sure made this teenager lose plenty of blood.

"THORIN!" He shouted! "HELP!"

He took the biggest strides he could. The girl sobbed as he ran, her head resting on his shoulder, her left hand clutching at her upper right arm, blood spilling over her fingers.

In a matter of seconds, he had reached Thorin and Fili, and was presenting her to the other too, his face creased with worry.

"We have to get her back to camp," he said hurriedly. "Only Gandalf will know what to do."

At that exact moment, she had decided to look down at her wound, and had fainted, her head bending backwards. Kili clutched on to her tighter, and Fili placed his hands at the base of her skull, willing her head to stay upright.

Thorin nodded. "Now."

~X~

Gandalf awoke to shouting coming from the woods. It sounded like they were screaming his name…

Suddenly, Fili and Thorin burst through the trees, Kili an instant behind them, holding what looked like a young dwarf girl in his arms. She appeared to be unconscious.

Gandalf was on his feet in an instant, at the girl's side the moment Kili set her down on Thorin's fur cloak, which he had graciously provided for her to lie down on. Gandalf examined the wound, and with a quick and painless (at least for him it was painless, Kili had to look away) extraction, the stake was out of her arm. He cast a spell on the wound and rubbed the herbs he had in his sack for emergencies like this over it, sealing a quick bandage around it to keep it from infection.

"It will heal," he said quietly. "She will be fine."

"What do we do with her, though?" Kili questioned. "She cannot come with us."

Thorin paused in thought, before he asked Gandalf, "Can you call one, an eagle? Have it send her to the Blue Mountains. She can live amongst our people."

Gandalf nodded, and before long, an eagle had come. Kili, feeling responsible, placed the girl, a note from Thorin to the people of the Blue Mountains, and a sack full of food and a bottle of clean spring water onto the eagles back. He looked on sadly as the eagle flew away, praying to anyone that would listen for the safety of the young girl, and that she might find a prosperous home with the other dwarves.

He felt Fili place a warm, comforting hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry," Fili said softly, "She will be fine." They watched the eagle fly into the night sky until it disappeared, taking the only survivor with it.

Fili and Kili retired to their bedrolls, Kili throwing a quick glance and a solemn nod at his uncle Thorin, before he sunk down onto the forest floor, only realizing then that the rest of their company had barely even stirred.

"Stupid dwarves," he muttered, before he closed his eyes and was finally able to drift off to sleep.


End file.
